The Car Series
by aesc36
Summary: Ron tries to figure some things out with the help of a sleepless night and a good friend
1. Man's Best Friend

By: HF  
Site: www.ontheqt.org  
Pairings: Ron/Harry -- so if you don't like slash, you should know to turn right back around.  
Warnings: UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension)  
  
Notes: This is a more-or-less ongoing series of one-shot fics revolving around a few central characters -- namely, Ron, Harry, and a third you'll have to read to find out. I promise on my soul that it's not a cute, shy, yet incredibly powerful Muggle-born fifth-year witch on an exchange program from America who is fleeing her past connection to her uncle Voldemort... No, no. Nothing like that. Do read and review, yes?  
  
MAN'S BEST FRIEND  
  
Ron pulled on his black cape, cursing the fact that his friendship with Harry kept him from stealing his best friend's invisibility cloak. A glance out the dormitory window showed him that, thankfully, the sky was overcast, hiding the stars, and there was no moon out. It would make skulking through the Hogwarts grounds and corridors so much easier, even though... Ron's gaze drifted longingly to Harry's trunk, where the invisibility cloak rested, neatly folded, and his fingers itched to take it. /Harry'll go *mental*/ he told himself sternly. /Don't even think about it./  
  
/But, but.../ sputtered the rebellious, covetous voice in his head.  
  
/NO./ he told it firmly. /MENTAL, I tell you./  
  
/Oh, *fine*./  
  
Ron made himself slip quietly out of the room without looking back, although he could hear Harry tossing and turning in his bed. A soft shuff-shuff told him he'd kicked his blankets off. And Ron didn't dare go back and fix them -- that'd wake Harry up, he'd see Ron standing in his cloak and pajamas like some crazy vampire, want to know what was going on... and that would lead to all sorts of awkward questions Ron didn't feel like answering. So, he left, shutting the door soundlessly behind him.  
  
The common room was deserted, with only the great fire burning to light the place. Ron suppressed a shiver despite the warmth as he slipped out the portrait hole, ignoring the Fat Lady's demands to know where he was off to this time of night. He prayed she wouldn't tell Filch anything if he came around. Speaking of Filch... keeping an eye out for Mrs. Norris, Ron stole through the empty corridors, trying his best to keep to the shadows.  
  
Hogwarts at night still held some fear for him, although he figured that he, Harry, and Hermione had between the three of them spent more time prowling the corridors after-hours than the rest of the students for the past hundred years. It was the statues and the shadows, he decided, and the fact that everything was so *silent*, the kind of silence that means someone -- or something -- is watching. Sometimes, he would see a painting move out of the corner of his eye, and he thought he'd have a heart attack. Trying to keep a lid on the impulse to scream and run back to the Gryffindor tower, Ron kept walking at a careful, sedate pace until he got to the main door leading to the grounds. He opened that, closed it soundlessly, turned, and then ran like hell across the lawn to the Forbidden Forest.  
  
Partly, he ran because he knew if he just walked, he'd end up turning around and running straight back inside. He'd heard of the centaurs, unicorns, and creepy cloaked things that inhabited the Forest from Harry, and about the werewolves and lamias from the rumor mill. He'd experienced the Acromantulas for himself. Unicorns, he decided, would be alright. Acromantulas... he tried very, *very* hard not to think about them.  
  
The giant spiders were part of the reason for his visit. Not that he was planning on seeing them -- it would take a bribe of phenomenal proportions to get him to find Aragog's lair again, and even then, he probably wouldn't take it -- but rather, something else. It was a vague sense of guilt and responsibility that drove him out here... after all, it was his fault things ended up the way they did.  
  
Shaking a little bit, and not entirely from the cool night air, Ron pulled out his wand and murmured 'Lumos.' The bit of white light that sprang from the end of his wand was not terribly comforting, as it made the forest into a place where shadows became even darker and more complex, and made the near distance so impenetrably black it seemed that Ron was just about to fall into a gaping abyss every ten steps or so. The forest rustled and echoed with dim calls, both near and far, and however much Ron tried to convince himself that they were just owls and insects (not spiders -- harmless insects, like ladybugs and crickets), he knew that they weren't.  
  
As long as there wasn't a howl or the clicking sound of pincers snapping together, he could deal with it. /You didn't go to the Chamber of Secrets and face down Sirius Black for nothing/ he told himself. /You didn't beat McGonagall's chess set for nothing. Keep walking, you pansy./  
  
Ron wasn't entirely sure how far he walked, or how long. It felt like he'd spent hours roaming around the forest, trying to keep to the clearer paths and trying not to think of what he would do if he got lost. Surely he was about ten miles or so away from the forest's edge -- he'd been out there half the night, it seemed. He'd have to turn around, he decided bleakly, but with a certain thanks. He'd try again soon. Maybe.  
  
Just as he turned to go back, Ron heard a creaking sound somewhere off to his left, and the sharp snapping of twigs being broken -- or ground underfoot. He tensed and whispered 'nox' to black out the light from his wand, and there was *real* darkness this time, absolutely unbroken. He crouched down behind a tree, wand at the ready, breath caught in his lungs. /You shouldn't have come out here, you idiot/ said the little voice. /Not without Harry's cloak, anyway. Harry's *invisibility cloak*, did we say? Moron./  
  
The snapping sound came closer, and as it did, Ron could discern a light filtering through the trees. It wasn't lantern light or torchlight, and it was nowhere near being dawn, so it was either something incredibly monstrous and hostile... or, no! Yes! It was! The light increased to a blazing brightness, and it was his Ford Anglia (well, his dad's) lumbering placidly towards him.  
  
"Car!" Ron said happily, unfolding himself from the very difficult crouch he'd been in, and stepping up to greet the car, whose engine purred happily at seeing him. "Hey, car," he said again, touching the dented and chipped hood with gentle fingers.  
  
The wilds had not treated the Anglia very well at all, Ron thought with dismay, looking at the dings in the formerly shiny blue paint and the flat tires. Dirt and mud smeared the windshield and it looked like a bird had tried to build a nest where the passenger's side rearview mirror had been busted out. Peering inside the broken window, Ron saw that the upholstery was mostly torn out and a wealth of -- shudder -- spiderwebs decorated the dashboard and gearshift.  
  
"Have you been taking care of yourself?" he asked, feeling a bit stupid for asking that of a *car* of all things. Surprisingly, though, the car's engine buzzed in something that sounded satisfied. "My dad still misses you, you know, but he's not going to get another car. Partly it's because Mum would kill him if he did, but I know he really liked you. And you came in handy when we went to get Harry from the Burrow. Remember that?"  
  
He didn't get an answer, but he imagined that yes, the car did remember.  
  
"Lots of things have changed since that summer," he told it, wondering if he could open the door and slip inside. He didn't know if the car would let him -- it might decide to really go wild and plow him down or eject him. "You remember the Acromantulas, of course -- thanks for the save on that, by the way -- but there's been tons else." He went through the whole list of third and fourth year adventures, glossing painfully over the fact that he and Harry hadn't spoken for a good part of fourth year.  
  
"And now... well, it's fifth year and it's going okay. No one's tried to kill us yet."  
  
The car must have noticed something in his voice, because the driver's side door swung open on its creaky, rusted hinges. Carefully, trying to ignore the silvery presence of the spiderwebs, Ron slipped inside and closed the door. With a gentle whirring, the car came to life around him, the dashboard lighting up and the gears adjusting automatically. There was a low, difficult whine, a clunk, and then a long-lost-but-familiar sensation of weightlessness as the car rose. He and the car flickered into invisibility as they broke through the treetops and began to move a little faster.  
  
/This is the life/ Ron thought as he and the car flew through the sky. The wind coming through the window was cold on his face and invigorating, but he felt strangely peaceful. Stretching full-length on the seat, contorted a bit uncomfortably around the gearshift, Ron decided he could live the rest of his life like this -- just drifting through infinite space, his mind as free and open as the sky around him. Nowhere to go, nothing to do... just flying.  
  
"I'm sorry about the Whomping Willow," he told the car, which hummed invisibly around him. "That was really great of you, to get us out like that, and I don't blame you for dumping us out, either -- I mean, if I was in your place, that's what I would have done, too. You know, I don't think I could have been more surprised when Harry and I saw you show up in the Forest that time and saved us from those spiders. Even after everything we put you through, you still came in and got us out okay, and I guess I owe you huge thanks for that, too."  
  
It was as if some switch went off in Ron's brain, because he found himself just rambling as the car banked and headed north to fly past the school and over the lake. "It sort of reminds me of last year, when I wasn't speaking to Harry because of the whole Triwizard mess. Honestly, I couldn't believe it when Dumbledore told me that he wanted me for, well... you know." His voice automatically lowered to a whisper. "That I would be the thing Harry would miss most in the world.  
  
"There isn't any way I can say what happened, but it was like... whoa. I mean, he'd still miss me even after I was being a total git? He'd still miss me even after I managed to do everything I could to muck up our relationship?" Ron turned over on his stomach, and through some artful squirming and rearrangement of limbs, managed to sit up and lean against the door, head out the window. "And all I thought the entire time was 'I'm definitely not worth it.' I mean, when am I ever worth anything? You know what I mean?"  
  
/You're saying 'I mean' entirely too much/ said a tiny Hermione-like voice in the back of his head. Ron groaned and winced. Did he never have any privacy? Was he doomed to have his two better halves (or better thirds, whatever) following him around, making corrections and getting him out of scrapes?  
  
"And then -- believe me, car, you don't *ever* want to go this way -- I started thinking that maybe... well, maybe things are changing. It's like, the lower I go, the better he gets, or -- oh, hell I don't know what I'm saying. I guess it's the more I drive him crazy or resent him, the better I like him. It's even worse because I *can't* hate him, not really. I was thinking about it tonight, before I came out here. If anything, I hate myself for trying to hate him, and I end up liking him even more. See?"  
  
He didn't know if the car 'saw' anything, other than whatever it saw through its headlights, but Ron felt much better for talking to something, anything. Once, he'd come across Percy confiding something low and completely confidential to Hermes the screech owl, who had listened with a calm and unruffled dignity to Percy's laments over Penelope and Oliver. Ron, though, didn't have a trusty animal companion; he couldn't talk to Pig because the wretched owl wouldn't sit still for more than ten seconds at a time, and Errol spent most of his time asleep. Scabbers had slept a lot too, come to think about it, and Ron didn't even want to *think* about Scabbers right now.  
  
"How can you tell someone you like them too much when you can't even really admit it to yourself? I mean" -- here the Hermione-voice interrupted with a smug correction -- "that'll just screw *everything* up, you know? Everything and *everything*. And it's not like I have the time to worry about it, between everything else that's going on." He paused reflectively, then amended: "Well, maybe I do. It's just Ron Weasley, after all, who spends all his time procrastinating on homework and tagging along after Potter and Granger."  
  
Ron shook his head, surprised at his own bitterness. He usually wasn't given to self-reflection, but in a moment of brutal honesty, which the car seemed to accept, he said, "No... it's not that. I can't ever hate Harry; I liked him from the moment I saw him. And I think I'm getting too old to get all worked up over stupid stuff, like last year. I mean, I'm fifteen after all. Practically a grown-up."  
  
/That's disputable/ said Hermione.  
  
/Oh, shut up/ he told the voice firmly. Hermione subsided and Ron stayed quiet for a while, watching the cloud deck as they circled slowly beneath it. It was very peaceful up here, he thought again, feeling his concerns and insecurities slip away from him into thin air. The car hummed comfortingly all around him, urging him to quit talking and just relax. Ron slipped a bit deeper into the seat, ignoring the broken spring pressing into his tailbone. "Thank you, car," he told it, stroking the invisible dashboard a few times before slipping off to sleep.  
  
* * *  
  
When Ron opened his eyes again, he panicked for a moment when he saw that he had no body. Reason reasserted itself quickly, though, and he came to: he was still in the car, still in the air with the invisibility booster turned on, and hovering outside of the window to his dormitory. The sky around him was softly purple as the sun came up behind the clouds that still shrouded the horizon. Birds had started to sing, and there were the faintest beginnings of shadows on the ground.  
  
Ron straightened and winced at the stiffness in his neck. He felt strangely rested, as if he'd spent a long, dreamless night in his own bed rather than a few hours curled up in the very uncomfortable seat of a flying car. Thinking back to his awkward, stumbling confessions and pathetic, circular arguments, he blushed a bit. /It's not like the car is going to *tell* anyone, for crying out loud/ he told himself with some asperity.  
  
It was getting late, though -- or early, depending on one's point of view -- and he had to figure out a way to get inside. He realized with a start that the car had pulled up right next to the Gryffindor dorm window; he could see his bed with its covers in disarray, and Harry's right next to it, with Harry curled up right in the middle of it and the covers on the floor.  
  
"Car," Ron whispered even as he wondered *why* he was whispering, "go down now. Down!"  
  
The car stayed where it was, engine humming.  
  
"Down!" Ron pulled out his wand and tapped the steering wheel a few times, cursing to himself. The last thing he needed was to spend the rest of the day floating up here. No, no -- the last thing he needed was to be found out of bed and missing. McGonagall would go *postal*. "Car," he hissed, "I *swear* I'll send you to the scrapyard if you don't get down *right now*."  
  
Instead of descending, the car flickered into visiblity around him.  
  
"Oh, God," Ron moaned, staring at his all-too-visible hand in horror. He was going to get it for sure. He pictured Filch or Hagrid -- please, God, let it be Hagrid -- poking around in the shrubbery outside the tower and looking up at the car's undercarriage. "Car, please, I'm sorry about the scrapyard thing, just turn invisible and get me down! Please!"  
  
The car did nothing of the sort. Instead, it seemed to tilt into the stone wall and gently bump against it. As it did so, the rearview mirror scraped against the window. It wasn't very loud, but in the predawn stillness and with Ron's anxiety, it sounded like thunder.  
  
Breathless and frozen with terror, Ron watched as Harry stirred on his bed, blinking groggily and fumbling for his glasses. Harry's head turned suddenly and his lips moved -- someone else had woken up, too. His hands locked in a deathgrip on the edge of the window, Ron stayed perfectly still -- maybe if he didn't move, Harry wouldn't see him. But no... no, that wasn't happening (should have taken the invisibility cloak, trilled the little envious voice), because Harry was now staring at the window in complete and utter shock.  
  
Ron managed to free one hand to gesture to the lock on the window. Apparently recovering, Harry stood up and stumbled over to the window, unlocked its latch, and pulled it open.  
  
"What izzit?" Neville Longbottom's voice drifted sleepily through the window.  
  
"Nothing," Harry said quickly. "It's... ummm... it's Hedwig."  
  
"Oh, okay." Neville fell silent.  
  
Harry turned back to Ron. "What are you doing?" he hissed.  
  
"Bloody floating here," Ron replied, pulling the window open the rest of the way. "What's it look like?" /Thank you, car./ he thought spitefully. /See if I ever come to check up on you again./  
  
Harry's cold hand was on his, steadying him as he came through the window. The contact nearly made Ron jump, despite his obviously precarious position, and he felt giddy for a moment before manfully suppressing the sensation.  
  
/Thank you car/ he thought, creeping inside. /Really, thank you./  
  
"Do you mind telling me what you were doing?" Harry whispered, glaring at him.  
  
"I was out for a ride," Ron answered as blithely as he could under the circumstances -- which was not very blithe, but it was flip enough to make Harry glower in a fairly good Hermione impersonation. He pulled off his cloak and set it on his trunk. "Why?"  
  
  
Surprisingly, Harry stepped back a bit and shrugged. "No reason... it's just... I mean, if you wanted, you could have borrowed my cloak." He added something else that sounded like 'and I would have come with you, if you wanted', but Ron wasn't entirely sure and wasn't in the mood to push his luck.  
  
"Just wanted to see how it was doing, if it was running okay," Ron assured him, flopping down on his bed. His back and neck still hurt, and he figured he'd gotten away lucky. Between McGonagall, Filch, Snape, and the Acromantulas, a lot worse could have happened than having Harry find him and hold his hand to help pull him back inside.  
  
"Is it?"  
  
"Yeah, runs great. I think it's happy out there." Ron gestured to the forest in the distance.  
  
"Oh." Harry blinked and sat down on Ron's bed, right next to him. "Good." He fidgeted wordlessly for a moment as if something were scratching him, then said, his face quite red: "You didn't tell me anything about it."  
  
Ron carefully kept his face very, very straight. "Oh... well, um, I sort of had to work a few things, out, too. You know -- communing with nature and all that."  
  
"I see." Something flickered through Harry's voice. Wistfulness? Concern? Ron was a moment trying to identify it before he gave up. "Well..." Harry trailed off uncertainly, then peered down at Ron through his spectacles, his eyes very, very green. The same unidentified sentiment in his voice echoed itself in his eyes. "You're okay, aren't you?" There was desperation there, Ron thought, wondering what to make of it. "You'd tell me if you weren't okay." Insistence.  
  
"Yeah," Ron said. He touched Harry's hand very gently, the tips of his fingers drifting over the sensitive skin, the tendons and slender bones of it. "I'd tell you if I wasn't... But Harry, I *am*." He realized that he was, even as he said it, and it was with a smile that he said, "I'm okay."  
  
"Great." Harry beamed down at him, and Ron had to smile back.  
  
"You can come with me next time," he offered, pretty sure that the car had gone back to the forest. "I have something else I have to thank it for."  
  
"What?" Harry asked curiously. "Thank it?" Something in his tone suggested Ron had been up a bit too late.  
  
"Oh..." Ron knew he didn't have the nerve *quite* yet to tell Harry, but it didn't stop him from grinning and saying in the best mysterious tone he could muster, deepening his voice portentously: "Something. Everything."  
  
Harry had the grace to look confused, and Ron decided with a bit of private laughter that it was a good look for him. 


	2. You've Got a Fast Car

By: HF  
Site: www.ontheqt.org  
Pairings: Ron/Harry -- so if you don't like slash, you should know to turn right back around.  
Warnings: angst and a bit of mush  
  
YOU'VE GOT A FAST CAR  
  
You've got a fast car  
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?  
  
--Tracy Chapman, 'Fast Car'  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
"Hey... psst, Harry! Hey!"  
  
"Mumblewumble."  
  
"*Harry*."  
  
"Mmmph! What?"  
  
"Potter, wake your lazy arse up, damn it."  
  
"Oh, I love it when you talk dirty, *Weasley*."  
  
Harry struggled to sit up in bed, which was not easy with Ron hovering over him like a large, pajama-clad specter. Even with the darkness and even without his glasses, he thought he could see the knowing smirk on Ron's face and he blushed. /Oh, you *are* a forward thing, aren't you?/ snarked a little voice in his head. The inner monologue sounded suspiciously like Aunt Petunia. No... no, it was worse: it sounded like Professor Snape.  
  
"I thought we'd go tonight," Ron continued in a very low whisper as Harry fumbled blindly around his bedside table for his glasses. Ron made a clicking, exasperated sort of sound and held them out to him, although Harry had to squint to pick Ron's hand from the surrounding blur, close as it was. He restored the glasses to his nose and Ron swam into focus.  
  
"Go where?"  
  
Ron rolled his eyes. "The *car*."  
  
/Oh, of *course*./ Snape sneered. /The *car*. Why didn't you think of that, Mr. Potter?/  
  
"Tonight?" Harry asked crankily and maybe a bit too loudly -- Dean Thomas emitted a sort of snuffling, curious sound and the two potential fugitives paused before Dean turned over and resumed snoring. "It's us versus Ravenclaw tomorrow, or have you forgotten?"  
  
"Of course I haven't *forgotten*," Ron said. "It's why I want to go tonight. You wouldn't believe how relaxing it is, really. Now get a move on."  
  
Harry pulled on his shoes and rummaged for his invisibility cloak. When they were both covered up (a difficult proposition with Ron being miles taller than him and because standing very close to Ron didn't seem anywhere *near* as platonic as it had four years ago), they crept out of the dormitory, down the stairs, through the common room, and out the portrait hole.  
  
"Who's there?" the Fat Lady asked sleepily. "Vi? 'Sat you?"  
  
Neither of them answered. Ron moved silently next to him, although he looked very uncomfortable, hunched over to keep the invisibility cloak from lifting up too high and exposing their shoes for all the world -- or just Mrs. Norris, which would be more than enough to secure their doom -- to see. Harry wondered how much an invisibility cloak cost and if he should try to find one for Ron; every time they used this thing it got harder because Ron seemed to make it a practice of growing another two inches every three weeks. Right now, Harry was torn between treading on the hem of the cloak, which would make them stumble, or crashing into Ron every other step, which would make them fall.  
  
As silently as they walked -- or shuffled, whichever -- it seemed far too loud to Harry, who thought he heard voices where there were none and echoes where there shouldn't be. Partly it was the paintings; there was a party winding down in one frame, and Sir Cadogan had decided to take a quest down to the lower levels, so Harry heard him shouting threats and challenges at the other paintings, who ignored him.  
  
"Avast, you knaves! You varlets!" Sir Cadogan bellowed.  
  
Harry and Ron froze, thankfully at the same instant, but Sir Cadogan wasn't addressing them. Instead, he was shouting at two distinguished figures in a Rembrandt painting, who were staring at him in annoyance.  
  
"Stand and fight, scoundrels! Taste the vengeful iron blade of Cadogan the Mighty! Have at you!"  
  
Ron snickered and indicated they should keep moving. It was getting stuffy under the cloak and Ron's proximity was a bit too disturbing for Harry to endure for long. Finally, they made it down the main hallway and out the door. The cold air of early winter filtered through Harry's heavy jumper and mittens, but it felt wonderful after the stifling heat of the inside.  
  
Wordlessly, they trotted across the lawn, staying away from Hagrid's hut and the little pool of light around it. The second they were deep in the forest to escape detection by either Hagrid or Fang, they pulled out their wands. "Lumos" was uttered by each of them at almost the same time; they glanced at each other and laughed nervously.  
  
"Read my mind," Ron said, peering around the shadowy forest.  
  
"Where to?" Harry asked, trying not to feel happy about reading Ron's mind and trying not to be confused as to why he *didn't* want to feel happy.  
  
"Er, well, I don't know," Ron confessed, glancing at him. Even in the silvery half-light of their wands, he could see Ron blushing. "The car sort of found me last time I came out here. I think it's good at hiding unless it wants to be seen."  
  
Harry nodded in agreement, although he didn't see how something as large as a car could hide in a forest -- that, and he had never thought of cars as being naturally given to stealth. "You know, if I ever tried to have this conversation with the Dursleys, they'd have me locked up in the cupboard for a week."  
  
An odd expression flickered across Ron's face, made more ambivalent by the shadows. Harry wondered at it; it looked very much like anger, which definitely *wasn't* the reaction he'd been looking for. Ron's typical laugh would have done nicely, not this... this spasm of fury. "I remember trying to tell them about my flying motorcycle dream," Harry continued, striving to work past the moment and get a non-hostile reaction out of his best friend. "I thought Uncle Vernon going to have a heart attack."  
  
Ron cracked a grin at that. "Too bad he didn't -- would have saved you some grief, wouldn't it?" There was still anger under the joking tone and the smile, though.  
  
"It's not something I'm upset about," Harry said. He tried to make his voice reassuring and nonchalant -- they'd joked about this sort of thing in the past and seen that the Dursleys got their comeuppance in one way or another. Escaping from Uncle Vernon during summer before second year and blasting out the Dursleys' fireplace during fourth had been deeply satisfying experiences for Harry. Ron had enjoyed them as well.  
  
He stepped carefully around a root and tried not to shiver too hard. He *hated* cold weather, and Ron's sudden distance wasn't helping any. "Hey, car!" he called tentatively. "Car!" He wondered if the car's heater was still working.  
  
"I don't think it comes when you call it," Ron said, pushing a branch out of the way. "I think it's suspicious until it knows that you're to be trusted -- that's why it was following us when we were following the, you know, the spiders."  
  
Harry decided that, if someone had told him six years ago that he would be traipsing around a forest looking for a feral car, he would have told them they'd lost it, but secretly wished that would have been the case. The way Ron talked about the car, it sounded like the Ford Anglia had been a thinking, feeling being all its life, like the puppy Aunt Petunia had mercifully spared when Dudley had begged for one and she'd refused to buy it for him on the grounds that it would mess on the rug. Listening to Ron go on about the car, and remembering the way he'd tried to coax it into making it over the lake on their approach to Hogwarts, it was like listening to a perfectly natural phenomenon: living cars and the boys who drove them.  
  
"I think this is where I found it the last time," Ron said after they'd been wandering around for forty minutes or so. He stared into the depths of nondescript, anonymous forest.  
  
"How can you tell?" Harry asked sarcastically.  
  
Ron really did grin this time, his face pale in the light but full of its usual good humor. "I don't, but I'm getting sick of wandering around. The car'll find us anyway."  
  
"Oh, that's comforting."  
  
"Shut it, Potter."  
  
The mood had miraculously eased between them and they waited in companionable silence. Harry rubbed his arms vigorously trying to warm himself up, and trying to convince himself that the forest night noises were perfectly normal. Ron must have noticed his coldness, or shared in it, because he moved a little closer. "It's bloody freezing out here," he said softly, breath misting in the night air. "Where are you, car?"  
  
As if in answer to his questions, there was a sharp, steady cracking over to their right, just ahead. Harry tensed and whirled, ready to attack, but saw the reassuring twin beams from the headlights as the Anglia methodically maneuvered through the trees to them.  
  
"It looks pretty beat up," was Harry's assessment as soon as they got close enough to see the dilapidated exterior and peer into the interior, which was not that much better off. The interior didn't look much better. "Do you think maybe it would let us take it up to the castle to clean it a little? Maybe Hagrid could take care of it."  
  
"Maybe," Ron said thoughtfully. "I think it likes it out here, though."  
  
They studied the car in silence for a moment. Finally, Harry, who was beginning to think the experience was somewhat surreal (even considering, in the normal course of events for him, 'surreal' required something truly bizarre happening, but he was sure this qualified), said, "Well, are you done? I thought last time you had something to thank it for."  
  
"Huh?" Ron blinked as if just waking up from being caught dozing in Trelawney's lectures. "Oh, yeah..." He blushed furiously, winced, and then blushed some more.  
  
/Oh, isn't he *the* most darling thing when he does that?/ Professor Snape cooed sarcastically.  
  
/Yes/ Harry replied firmly. /He is./  
  
/Sugar, spice, and everything nice, is it?/ the snarky voice demanded.  
  
/Yes, it is./  
  
"Well," Ron coughed, stroking the car's dented hood, "thanks, car. I'm sure you know what for."  
  
Harry, who had been expecting something along the lines of an earth-shattering confession of gratitude (well, not expecting per se, but hoping would have about described it), stared. "That's *it*?" he demanded, his voice unnaturally high. "You drag me out here to say *thanks*? To the *car*?" Privately, he wondered why he was being irrational, then told himself that it was *Ron* who was being irrational.  
  
Ron stared at him in a way that suggested he was wondering the same thing. "I told you that you could come with me the next time I came out here," he said stiffly, "and what I have to say thanks about is between me and the car."  
  
Now the conversation itself was becoming surreal. Too tired to argue, Harry shrugged, and spent some energy trying to figure out when things had become awkward. He had just settled on his unexpectedly ill-received joke about his aunt and uncle's imaginary reaction to the talking car scenario when Ron spoke up:  
  
"Look... I'm sorry I snapped at you, but..." He brushed a hand through his hair, disheveling it even more -- Professor Snape emitted a sardonic "Awwwwww" at this, which Harry firmly ignored -- and said, "Hey, if you want, let's go for a ride. I'll... I'll try to tell you about it. Talking's easy up there." Ron gestured up at the sky to dispel any doubts as to where they were going.  
  
Harry nodded helplessly and watched as the car's doors creaked open. Ron, because it was his car (his dad's, anyway), slid into the driver's seat. Giving some thought to the possibility that he was still dreaming, Harry moved numbly around to the passenger side and collapsed in the seat. The broken spring right in the center of the bucket seat dug right into Harry's left buttock, and what was worse, there was no way to avoid it except by adopting a very uncomfortable off-kilter position that had him half-leaning into Ron. It was not much consolation that Ron appeared to be equally uncomfortable with his seat.  
  
There wasn't time to do much about it; the car rolled along the path and began to rise. Harry grinned as he remembered the last time this happened -- even with the rather heart-pounding end to it, the flying car ride had mostly been fun. It had secured his and Ron's reputations amongst the older students, as well as immediately elevating them to God Status amongst the first years. It had been worth McGonagall's fury and Hermione's superior smirking. Almost.  
  
"Good times," Ron said softly, tilting his head back. They were above the tree line now, and as Harry watched, everything faded around him. Ron, the car, his own body vanished. "Y'know, I remember getting ready to come here -- to Hogwarts, I mean -- and being terrified that it would be awful... but it's turned out okay, hasn't it?"  
  
"Better than okay." Harry wondered if Ron was looking at him.  
  
"You're right," Ron's voice said from right next to him, sounding like it was very close. Harry's breath caught.  
  
/What about Cedric, Mr. Potter?/ Snape asked sweetly from a corner of Harry's mind. /I'm sure he and his family would beg to differ with you./ Firmly, Harry told the voice to shut up. Desperate to break away from a destructive train of thought that had obsessed him most of the summer, Harry said, "When we were talking earlier, and I was talking about the Dursleys freaking out about flying cars and motorcycles, you... I dunno. You didn't laugh."  
  
There was a creaking of springs as Ron drew back. "Yeah," he said, his voice very soft. "It upset me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
A tense silence, then: "Because when Dumbledore said he wanted you to spend the summer with the Dursleys, I thought I was going to explode. I mean, I know we joke about the Muggles and all that, but..." Ron sighed in exasperation. "But I *hate* when you talk about them locking you in that bloody cupboard. It's not right."  
  
"It's no big deal," Harry said.  
  
"It *is* a big deal, Harry. It's a big deal to *me*." The seat creaked again. "That prat cousin of yours got what was coming to him. So did your other aunt -- Marge the Barge or whatever her name was. What your own family did to you, locking you up, mistreating you... it wasn't right, Harry. Thinking about it, I can't imagine anyone in my family doing something like that -- I can't imagine anyone's family doing that to them. I don't think I can laugh about it much anymore."  
  
Harry stared out the window, shivering a bit as the cold night air blew right into his face and whipped his hair back. Ron's words settled into him more deeply than the cold, churning restlessly around in his brain, so far from being typical of his fiery, mercurial friend. "You're right,' he agreed, "it wasn't right, but I can't change it, and everything turned out okay."  
  
A soft sound of resigned agreement was his only answer.  
  
"You're right, it did," Ron said at last, "but it still doesn't make things *right*. No one should have treated you like that, Harry..."  
  
It wasn't the cold that made Harry shiver this time. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ron overrode him.  
  
"You probably think I'm absolutely nutters for saying it."  
  
"No," Harry said immediately, turning to face Ron, athough he couldn't see him. He wondered where Ron was looking. "I think... I don't know what I think," he said. "I mean, I know what I think, but I can't put it into words." He reached out absently, as if by grasping at the air he could snatch words for himself. "I've never had anyone say that to me. Not Hermione or Dumbledore, or anyone. And it means a... a lot." He winced.   
  
/Oh, wonderfully eloquent conclusion, Potter/ Snape applauded from the back of Harry's skull. /They'll want you at the Wizard's Rotary, next./  
  
Ron remained silent after Harry's scintillating finale, but Harry could hear him shifting around on his seat. "I hate the thought of anyone hurting you," Ron said at last, and Harry heard a definite note of strain in his voice, as if the words were fighting to escape Ron's mouth despite his better judgment. "When we thought that Sirius was, y'know, a murderer and that he was going to kill you I, well, I decided I wasn't going to let that happen." Ron paused. "I guess it's a good thing for me that Sirius turned out to be innocent, but if he'd tried anything, Harry, I swear I would have done anything to stop him."  
  
"I remember," Harry said hoarsely. It was strange how most of his life had been one long, undistinguished blur for eleven years before suddenly snapping into painful clarity. He could remember that night in the Shrieking Shack very well, could dredge up the memory so that it was like looking at a photograph, or being in a movie. He could hear the pain and determination edging Ron's voice like Ron was speaking in his ear right now, saying that Sirius Black would have to kill him if he wanted to kill Harry... And for a moment, as Black hesitated, it seemed that, yes, Ron was going to die -- but that Sirius stood an awful good chance of being killed as well.  
  
The silence stretched on this time, broken only by the shush-shush of wind swirling through the car's interior. Harry stared out at the clear sky and the huge black canvas with its thousands of stars, the moon glinting overhead like a single eye. The black earth rolled away beneath them, relieved only by the glitter of starlight on the dark mirror of the lake surface. Hogwarts stood huge and silent on its cliff, a few fires glowing here and there, but otherwise, it was silent.  
  
Almost imperceptibly, Harry's thoughts began to circle back to Ron, and he idly turned over the mental image of how Ron would look in the starlight. Probably all pale and washed out, he decided after a moment, and shadowy in places because the light wasn't very strong. But still... Reflexively, he glanced over at Ron, although Ron was still invisible, and pictured him sitting there, sitting in his uncomfortable seat and pouring his heart out. His ears were probably red and he'd be frowning, with that slight furrow between his eyebrows that he got when concentrating very hard on something or apologizing to Hermione.  
  
It occurred to him that what Ron had just told him had been torn right from the heart, a heart that Ron kept strictly guarded behind his facade of bravado, snarky remarks, and high spirits. A lot of stuff got to him -- Harry winced, thinking of the unmitigated disaster that was fourth year -- but rarely got out. Anger, resentment, sarcasm were all typical. Loyalty was, too. But not actually *discussing* it. It was all well and good for Ron to volunteer to get himself killed but he'd sooner die than actually confess the reasons why.  
  
"I also remember," Harry said slowly, having decided that Ron's confession demanded he make one in return, "back in first year when that queen almost killed you -- that moment, when I realized what you were doing... I can't say it. I don't even know what I felt."  
  
"It had to be done, Harry. Anyone could have done that."  
  
"No." Harry jumped, surprised at the volume of his voice. "Not anyone could have done that. Not a lot of people *would* have done it. *You* did it and I'm still... argh. In awe, I guess. That you would do something like that. And mad, a little."  
  
"Mad? Why on earth..."  
  
Harry could feel Ron's eyes upon him. "Because you could have died," he said tightly. "Because I would have lost my best friend -- my *first* friend, for that matter. I'd never had one before you came. And then when that stupid Triwizard tournament thing came along and I thought you were going to die again, only it was going to be even *more* of my fault because I couldn't find you, and I couldn't stand it -- I *still* can't stand it, thinking about it."  
  
"But they weren't going to let us die," Ron said, his tone very slow and patient, as if Harry were being incredibly dense. "And it's not a big deal."  
  
"Dammit!" Harry barked. A sharp squeak of abused springs told him Ron had jumped in surprise. "If what the Muggles did to me was a big deal, then what almost happened to you -- twice! Twice, Ron -- then that's a big deal, too. Geez."  
  
"*Fine*," Ron huffed. "Honestly, I think Hermione's rubbing off on you."  
  
"On me!" Harry snickered, giving into the change of subject even though he really wanted to pound it into Ron's head that two instances of barely-avoided death were important. "You're the one who asked her to the ball."  
  
"Yeah, I did," Ron muttered. "Well, we all make mistakes, don't we?"  
  
As quickly as that, Ron's good mood faded. /Does he ever pick a mood and stay with it longer than five minutes?/ Harry asked Snape irritably. Snape did not reply, but if he did, Harry imagined it would be something smug. He scrunched further down into his jumper and wondered if the car was going to let them down any time soon.  
  
"Thought you liked Hermione," he said. He tried to keep the bitterness out of his words, but some creeped in nonetheless. Would Ron pick up on it? /Please, please no./  
  
"I do," Ron answered. "She's a good friend, even when she's going on about school and how *we're* the ones what get her into trouble all the time... but she's a good friend."  
  
Was it Harry's imagination, or was there a bit of a stress on the 'friend' part?  
  
"Anyway," Ron continued, "it's about time... Oh, the hell with it. Harry, I have something to tell you."  
  
Harry's heart almost cracked his ribcage trying to get out. "What?" he asked a little wildly. "What is it?"  
  
"I have to tell you why I came out here."  
  
"To thank the car," Harry said after a moment, utterly thrown by the contrast between his desperate, private hope and the reality. "Whatever for, you never told me."  
  
"Well, yeah," Ron said. "I did come out here to say thanks to the car, and I have to tell you why. And it's, well, you see, I -- oh *crap*."  
  
The car took that moment to blink rapidly in and out of visibility. Harry caught a few brief, spasmodic glimpses of Ron's frightened, embarrassed face, painfully red in the dome light above them. The car cycled through visibility and invisibility a few more times before settling on the former, and Ron still sat next to Harry, staring fixedly out the windshield and looking as if he were trying to keep from throwing himself out the door. Obviously sensing the potential for flight, the Anglia's locks clicked into place.  
  
"Stupid car," Ron muttered, pounding at the Invisibility Booster button on the dashboard. "BLOODY STUPID PIECE OF--" The tirade cut off as abruptly as it had begun. "Oh, God."  
  
"What were you going to tell me?" Harry managed to say through his amazement.  
  
Ron turned and looked at him. No, Harry decided. Ron Looked at him, his hazel eyes hooded in the dim overhead light but still piercing, wearing the same expression of deep concentration he got in chess, the same determination from the Shrieking Shack and the chessboard. It was, for a moment, the gaze of someone Harry wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, magic or no magic.  
  
"When I snuck out the last time, the car let me ride in it too -- well, duh, you know that already." Yes, Harry did; he'd been woken up by the most bizarre scraping sound and then had been immediately forced to question whether or not he'd been dreaming, as seeing a car floating outside the Gryffindor dormitory wasn't something that typically happened. "And I don't know if you remember this, but when I was trying to get in without falling to my death, you sort of... well, you held my hand and helped me, well, not fall to my death. And then when we were talking, I sort of, well, I... that is to say..."  
  
Ron's face was so violently red Harry was sure he was having an aneurysm. Just as he was trying to remember what to do in case his best friend's brains started dripping out his nose, he burst out with: "You touched my hand."  
  
"I... yeah, yeah, I did," Ron said faintly.  
  
That was another thing Harry remembered, something bright and unexpected that stood out in the daily slog of studying and Quidditch practice. It had been unexpected -- gentle, yes, but unexpected, the way Ron's fingers had trailed over the back of his hand, barely touching, cool with the cool of the night but warming.  
  
"I remember," Harry said, glancing sideways at Ron and screwing up his courage as he saw Ron's face melt into a mixture of terror and awe. "And I remember that I... that I liked it."  
  
"You did."  
  
"Yes," Harry said. "I did."  
  
They hadn't looked directly at each other since they'd climbed in the car, but now Ron turned towards Harry and as he did, a slow smile broke over his face. It started with a slight twitching at the corners of his lips, grew, became Ron's trademark rueful half-smile, and then finally exploded into a full-out grin.  
  
"You don't know... you don't know how long I've waited to hear that."  
  
"About two weeks, I'd say," Harry said, acutely aware he was grinning like a madman.  
  
"Longer," Ron corrected.  
  
"Then you know how long *I've* waited."  
  
"Damn." Ron leaned back in his seat, which creaked in protest. "I can't believe it... but it's good, isn't it?"  
  
An uneasy laugh, uneasy mostly because this was way too good to be true, creaked out of Harry's lips. "I didn't want to think that what you did that night meant anything more than it did, which was nothing," he said. "After a week or so, I didn't think about it much -- I think I was in denial, or repression or something."  
  
"Yeah, well, like they say, 'The Mississippi isn't just a river in Egypt,'" Ron quoted.  
  
"What do they say?"  
  
"Isn't that the saying?" Ron asked, frowning. "I'm sure that's what Hermione said it was -- it's about denial, too. But *everyone* knows the Mississippi isn't a river in Egypt... that makes absolutely no sense. I'll have to tell her she got it wrong."  
  
"I think that's 'the Nile', Ron, as in 'de Nile.'"  
  
"The Nile? De Nile? De... oh, I see."  
  
Harry snickered, which earned him a trademark "Shut up, Harry" from Ron, and they fell into silence once more. It was a truly comfortable silence this time, although tinged with not a little bit of elation; Ron was still wearing that mad grin of his, and Harry was sure his expression was similar. And there, too, was Ron's hand lying casually on the armrest, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world -- and, feeling the rightness of the gesture, Harry had to admit it was -- Harry took that hand in his and squeezed gently.  
  
They sat like that as the car circled slowly over the dark earth and came in for a landing a safe distance from the castle and the lights of Hagrid's hut. The Anglia swung its doors open; reluctantly, Harry and Ron broke their handclasp and got out. They stood for a moment staring at it.  
  
"Thanks, car," Ron said. The Anglia's engine rumbled.  
  
"Yeah," Harry echoed, at once perversely and deeply grateful. "Thanks."  
  
A loud clank shattered the stillness of the night air as the Anglia shifted gears and trundled forward on its flat tires, leaving twin gouges in the soft ground that led straight back to the Forbidden Forest. It would cause no small amount of consternation in the morning -- no one really knew that the Anglia still lived, wild and free, in the depths of the forest -- but with no harm done to the students or the castle (other than a massive amount of re-landscaping that sent Filch into hysterics), the matter was quickly forgotten by all but two of Hogwarts' inhabitants.  
  
Those two, once more under cover of Harry's invisibility cloak and much more comfortable with their proximity than before, stole quietly and, obviously, invisibly, back up to the Gryffindor Tower dormitories. The Fat Lady was too sleepy to interrogate them and let them through after receiving the correct password. After that, the scenario was predictable, although much less flashy than climbing in through a fifteen-story window at the dead of night: Harry and Ron separated reluctantly and slipped into their respective beds.  
  
There were no 'good nights' exchanged, though, and that was different -- but then again, they didn't need that reassurance, because it was. 


End file.
